Runningwater Warmbloods

About Runningwater Warmbloods

Runningwater Warmbloods was begun by me, Kendra Hansis, in 2001, when I bred my first mare. When that foal arrived, a filly by the Danish stallion Diamond, I was hooked. Ever since, I've done everything in my power to increase my knowledge of sporthorse breeding and improve my mareband. I'm always happy to talk horses, so feel free to call or email.

I love learning about and researching bloodlines, probably because I'm a longtime graduate student. I studied Irish and American literature for a long time and traveled to Ireland to give papers on Joyce and Heaney. Merging 'running' and 'water' is an homage to Joyce, who loved to combine words from languages across the globe just to push our ideas further. And really that's what horse breeding is all about: finding out which combinations will advance the modern sport horse.

Why running water? When I was a grad student, I often took jobs that were the opposite of academia, jobs that were outdoors and involved more physical than mental labor. The first of these jobs was working as an irrigator on a 100 acre tree farm. It was my job not just to keep a million plants alive but to make them grow. In four years, the job changed me from a pale, bookish academic to a Carhartt-wearing farmer with a firsthand appreciation of real work.

I learned a lot about the power of water, which can both give and take away life and remains a powerful symbol for me. I keep it in my farm name because the highs and lows of horse breeding parallel water's symbolism in many ways. I quite literally ran water for four years and the experience changed me. My time as an irrigator prepared me, oddly enough, for the hard work horse breeding requires.

My husband Mike supports this endeavor in many ways, perhaps most importantly by sticking with me through whatever comes. A professional chemist, Mike never has never questioned my need for horses and has become a true horse lover. Our partnership and our twin children are the reason I'm changing my farm suffix from RW to H2O, which I think really encapsulates everything we are and has the added benefit of being memorable.